Review: Robby Riverton: Mail Order Bride by Eli Easton

Title: Robby Riverton: Mail Order Bride

Author: Eli Easton

Length: Novel

Category: Historical, Western

At a Glance: I loved how everything in this story was resolved. Yes, it happened exactly as expected, but that’s what makes Robby Riverton: Mail Order Bride such a comfortable read, perfect for those precious quiet moments we all look for with a book.

Reviewed By: Lisa

Blurb: Being a fugitive in the old west shouldn’t be this much fun.

The year is 1860. Robby Riverton is a rising star on the New York stage. But he witnesses a murder by a famous crime boss and is forced to go on the run–all the way to Santa Fe. When he still hasn’t ditched his pursuers, he disguises himself as a mail order bride he meets on the wagon train. Caught between gangsters that want to kill him, and the crazy, uncouth family of his “intended”, Robby’s only ally is a lazy sheriff who sees exactly who Robby is — and can’t resist him.

Trace Crabtree took the job as sheriff of Flat Bottom because there was never a thing going on. And then Robby Riverton showed up. Disguised as a woman. And betrothed to Trace’s brother. If that wasn’t complication enough, Trace had to find the man as appealing as blueberry pie. He urges Robby to stay undercover until the danger has passed. But a few weeks of having Robby-Rowena at the ranch, and the Crabtree family will never be the same again.

Review: Like a fish takes to swimming and with the help of a bit of serendipity, actor Robby Riverton embarks on the most important—and unexpected—role of his life, playing Miss Rowena Fairchild, mail order bride. Giving up his place in the New York City limelight wasn’t a planned detour for Robby, nor was impersonating a woman—or at least not this woman, if we’re getting down to brass tacks—but he is nothing if not a consummate performer who’s no stranger to improvisation. After witnessing a cold-blooded murder, he makes a run for it to save his life. But Robby is being hunted by both the Bowery Boys and the law, the former wanting him dead, the latter wanting him to testify in the murder trial. When a couple of the bad guys catch up to the wagon train Robby’s traveling on, it’s a spot of quick thinking and his collective talents that transform him into a woman. When Robby, in the guise of Rowena, reaches Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he’s once again set upon and is being harassed by his pursuers, it’s Sheriff Trace Crabtree who comes to the ‘lady’s’ rescue.

And thus begins the love story of a lifetime.

By the time Miss Rowena Fairchild arrives in Flat Bottom, the town Trace is the sheriff of, to take her place as Clovis Crabtree’s wife-to-be—which would make Robby Trace’s sister-in-law (!)—Trace has already put two and two together and summed up that Rowena and Robby are one-in-the-same. Trace is willing to keep mum about it, though, knowing that Robby’s life is in danger, and knowing the Crabtrees aren’t going to allow anything to happen to the bride that Papa has paid two-hundred whole dollars for while Trace sorts through the details. Miss Rowena, with her fancy gowns, impeccable table manners (…like using a napkin rather than her sleeve…), her purty face and other fine airs makes her the fish out of her element in this Western backwater and adds to the humor in the story, but it doesn’t take long before her gumption, common sense, and gift for charming the whiskers right off Papa Crabtree has him seeing things her way, and it’s not much longer still before she begins to make a place for herself in the family. Oh, what a tangled web Miss Rowena inadvertently weaves.

Leave it to author Eli Easton to come up with such a sweet and captivating character as Robby Riverton. Watching him endear himself, as Rowena, to the Crabtree family was an utter delight. Papa is stern, stingy and stubborn, and I loved how Rowena handled him without Papa ever cottoning on to the fact he was being handled. The Crabtree wives, Marcy and Emmie, were good companions to Rowena and might even have successfully added a bit of civility to the Ranch before her arrival, if the Crabtree men hadn’t already been such a mangy bunch who’d been without a wife’s and mother’s influence for so long. And then, there’s also some goings-on at the Ranch that has set tongues-a-waggin’ in the town of Flat Bottom, costing Clovis more than anyone else, which I really enjoyed the slow reveal of. It was such a fun and quirky addition to the Crabtree family dynamics.

This novel isn’t all danger and bonding moments with the family, though. It’s a romantic story, too, set during a time when a relationship between Trace and Robby felt like an impossible dream to the ‘confirmed bachelor’ sheriff of a New Mexico town. The relationship that blossoms between them is lovely and filled with longing for a forever that extends years and decades into the future unknown—the one and only want being that they could live together ’til death did them part. Their attraction to each other was immediate and every moment spent together carried a sense of urgency along with it that added to the poignancy of what they believed was their very temporariness. I loved how everything in this story was resolved. Yes, it happened exactly as expected, but that’s what makes Robby Riverton: Mail Order Bride such a comfortable read, perfect for those precious quiet moments we all look for with a book.

You can buy Robby Riverton: Mail Order Bride here:
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